The Impact of the Deepening Economic Crisis on Women and

Gender Equality in Western EuropeWendy Harcourt and Lois Woestman

2010 Edition

About the Authors:Wendy Harcourt, Australian born feminist researcher and activ-ist received her PhD in 1987 from the Australian National University and has been living in Italy since 1988. She is Editor of the interna-tionally renowned journal Development at the Society for Interna-tional Development, Rome Italy. Wendy has written extensively in the area of globalization, alternative economics, gender and develop-ment, reproductive rights and health, culture and communications. Her latest book Body Politics in Development was published by Zed Books in June 2009 and won the Feminist Women’s Studies Association 2010 Book Prize.

Lois Woestman, US born feminist researcher, has lived and worked in Mexico, Ethiopia, France, Germany, the Netherlands—and since 2002, in Greece. She received her MA in development economics from the Institute for Social Studies in the Netherlands, and her PhD in anthro-pology from the New School for Social Research in New York City. Ms. Woestman has elaborated feminist analyses of development, post-socialist—and intra EU zone—neoliberal “transitions”, focusing on World Bank, IMF and EU development policies. She has also worked on issues of gender and property in postsocialist Africa, gender responsive budgeting, and alternative economics.

Editor: Reihana Mohideen Copyeditor: Rosanna Barbero, Alejandra Scampini and Cindy ClarkProofreaders: Michele Hasson, Karen MurrayDesigner: Diego García Pedrouzo

2011 Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) This publication may be redistributed non-commercially in any media, unchanged and in whole, with credit given to AWID and the author.Published by Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), Toronto, Mexico City, Cape Town.

The Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) is an interna-tional, feminist, membership organization committed to achieving gender equality, sustainable development and women’s human rights. AWID’s mis-sion is to strengthen the voice, impact and influence of women’s rights advocates, organizations and movements internationally to effectively advance the rights of women.

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The Impact of the Deepening Economic Crisis on Women and Gender Equality in Western Europe, Harcourt and Woestman. AWID

The Impact of the Deepening Economic Crisis on Women and Gender Equality in Western EuropeWendy Harcourt and Lois Woestman2010 Edition

Summary

Footnotes

1 - The interviews were mostly under-taken at the 25th WIDE Annual Confer-ence held in Bucharest in June 2010 and through individual telephone interviews.

This paper looks at the differen-tial impact of the economic crisis on women and gender roles in Western Europe. It begins with an overview of some of the broader impacts of the economic crisis in the region, and the different types of ‘recovery’ programs in-stated by national governments. The paper highlights in particular the experience of Greece and the growing divide between European countries where some countries are being forced to make deep cuts while others are maintaining high spending levels to stimulate eco-nomic recovery. Updating an ear-lier AWID commissioned paper by Wendy Harcourt in 2009 this edi-tion expands the original analysis through an in-depth case study on

Greece and a series of interviews with women rights activists from around Europe1 .It first presents an overall update on the situation and then looks further at the increas-ing uncertainty, precarity and un-relenting pressure for women’s reproductive and productive work in the wake of the crisis. The pa-per also discusses some further trends that have emerged in the last year, such as the growing di-vide between North and South Eu-rope, the lack of trust in the EU, in-creased racism and difficulties for migrants around fears about social unrest. Finally, the paper looks at the search for ‘alternatives’ to the current economic model that could inform a renewed feminist vision for Western Europe.

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The Impact of the Deepening Economic Crisis on Women and Gender Equality in Western Europe, Harcourt and Woestman. AWID

While the global economic crisis has hit all Western European coun-tries, it has taken different forms with diverse ‘recovery’ programs leading to differing impacts on women and gender roles. Across the board gender and class inequal-ities have worsened as the empha-sis continues to be on saving men’s jobs, cuts in public spending, such as health and education, in a return to true neo liberal economic policy tradition, after some talk of neo-Keynesian spending. Gender gaps and social inequalities are widen-ing as those already on the social and economic margins such as the young, the elderly, single and mi-grant women experience the most savage bite.

The European Commission (2010) reports on the latest figures which show how the economic crisis has led to an increase in unemploy-ment, In September 2009 women’s unemployment in the EU was 9%. The female unemployment rates are now moving ahead of men’s in at least 12 EU countries. As women’s jobs are concentrated in the public sector, the Commission predicts women will be dispro-portionately affected by job losses due to ongoing budget cuts in the public sector. In addition the EC

Report warns that women are less likely than men to be re-employed. In reflecting on the current cri-sis the Commission predicts that households will be more severely affected by a loss of income (due to job losses) in those countries where a male-breadwinner model still predominates,

The official figures inevitably hide what is happening in the informal sector. In the EU women represent over two thirds of the 63 million people between 25 and 64 years old who are part-timers, unemployed or not registered as working. Wom-en have a higher incidence of pre-carious contracts, involuntary part-time reflected in the gender pay gap (last measured as 17.6% on average in the EU in 2007). This precari-ous situation has repercussions on women’s lifetime earnings, social security protection and pensions, resulting in higher poverty rates, especially for retired women. The EC measures the at-risk-of-poverty rate as 22% for older women com-pared to 17% for men and for single parents 34%.

Even though women in Europe outnumber men among university graduates (59% of graduates in all subjects in 2006) (European Com-

mission 2006) women continue to be concentrated in tradition-ally feminized and often lower-paid sectors (health and care services, education, etc.) and there contin-ues to be inadequate life work care balance with women doing unpaid care work and part time paid work. In 2008, 31.1% of women worked part-time compared to 7.9% of men. (European Commission 2008)

As the European Women’s Lobby stated in December 2008 (EWL 2009), the European Recovery Plans are ‘gender neutral’ with no plans to invest in care, communi-ty-based services, education or health. This gender blindness con-tinues to be a feature of the eco-nomic crisis with little mainstream public recognition of what is hap-pening to women’s economic ac-tivities including pay cuts, loss of work or the increase in unpaid care work and domestic work at home.

To quote one woman from the UK: “Now there are no resources for women’s rights and there is a huge contraction in funding. Women’s organizations will no doubt be a major casualty of the crisis In the UK, women’s issues are not being taken seriously.” (Bucharest, June 6, 2010)

Introduction

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The Impact of the Deepening Economic Crisis on Women and Gender Equality in Western Europe, Harcourt and Woestman. AWID

Whereas earlier in the crisis it was the ‘new’ European countries which seemed set to take the hard-er blows, now commentators in the major European newspapers, webcasts and journals acknowl-edge that this is a systemic crisis, one that is creating fundamental uncertainty in Europe including threatening the whole European project itself.

As one commentator states ‘though the euro was meant to unify Eu-rope’s disparate economies into a self supporting whole, the crisis has ended up creating a dangerous schism between the export ori-ented economies of Western and Northern Europe and the more im-port dependent ones in the Medi-terranean and Iberian Peninsula who lack the strong underly-ing economies to rebuild eco-nomic growth and pay off debt even though their debts are only slightly higher than those in the larger economies.’ (Saunders 2010)

During 2010, the international fi-nancial focus has been on the eu-rozone’s financing problems and resulting financial market turbu-lence given the web of financial and trade links connecting Europe to the world. (The Economic Times 2010) Governments earlier had responded with recovery pack-ages and talk of re-regulation to prevent future crises. As report-ed in the 2009 Harcourt Review, there seemed to be a significant sea change away from neoliberal economics, at least at the level of discourse. However, over recent months since the big bail outs it seems to have gone back to busi-ness as usual. The cuts are now to the public sector and the rheto-ric is that governments have over-spent and the public now has to prepare for hard times.

The talk is of ‘immense human cost,’ a ‘new deep north-south di-vide’ and ‘wide spread poverty’ as the cuts ‘start to bite’. Reports on the working poor show that al-though there are differences in North and South Europe, unem-ployment and the risk of poverty is increasing across the board (Hanzl Weiss and Vidovic 2010) There is now concern at the austerity cuts in big EU economies such as Brit-ain, Germany and Italy (The Guard-ian 30 June 2010 p 2) There is a bleak mood across Western Europe with people living in Spain and Greece (see box on Greece below) in even more precarious positions with stringent economic changes reminiscent of the 1980s neoliberal structural adjustment programs of the Global South.

In 2010, Governments are providing much less support to large com-panies, though still some support, direct and indirect, is being given to the automobile and construc-tion industry, to try and bolster the functioning and competitiveness of their national economies; there is less hope that this is the way out of the crisis.

As one woman commented on the newspaper coverage of the crisis in Austria, “there continues to be re-ports of continued negotiation with trade unions and industry to save jobs in the metal, car and construc-tion industries, but with little obvi-ous success.” (Interviews Bucharest 5 June 2010)

Speaking about the drastic situa-tion in Spain another woman re-ported that “the financial stimulus to construction companies was 100% to men’s jobs, but now all construction has stopped. They invested millions but everything came tumbling down.”(Interview Bucharest 5 June 2010).

This confirms the earlier observa-tion by Dutch feminist researcher Dutting (2009) : ‘The crisis has shaken the belief in the free mar-ket, but … the only change is that the national state [has acted] as the vehicle to allocate national tax money to bankrupt banks and other transnational corpo-rations. As European states are transferring the money, the costs and risks are left for the general public and more precisely, for the tax-payers.’

The debts which the states creat-ed in the rescue of banks and in-dustries early on in the crisis are now being called in, along with the cuts in social expenditure, the reduction in public services, and privatization of public goods and institutions.

The newly elected coalition in the UK cut 1.3 million state jobs in the 2010 budget (The Guardian June 30, 2010) There is a sense of great uncertainty about just how far these cuts will go. The political correspondent of The Guardian (Stratton, July 2010) reports that the coalition plans are the worst for women since the welfare state began. Of the eight billion sterling of planned cuts in net revenue, six billion sterling will come for women. A study by the House of Commons library on behalf of the shadow welfare secretary Yvette Cooper under took a gender audit of the budget revealing that more than 70% of the revenue raised from direct tax and benefit changes is to come from female taxpayers. The prediction is that as women make up more of the public sec-tor workforce they will be more heavily hit by the public sector pay freeze and the projected 600,000 net public sector job losses.

Economic Crisis and State ‘Recovery’ Packages in Western Europe

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The Impact of the Deepening Economic Crisis on Women and Gender Equality in Western Europe, Harcourt and Woestman. AWID

There is a sense of great uncer-tainty on what the cuts will mean for women. In the Netherlands one woman working in the NGO sec-tor in a centre to support migrants reported that, “nobody knows just how deep the cuts will be. All I know is that everyone is losing jobs. Some projects have had to cut 75% of their staff. We are still waiting for decisions [post elec-tions]”(Interview, Bucharest June 6, 2010)

In Italy, the current government maneuver is being met by major opposition at regional level as well as resistance on the streets, but as one woman stated: “I work in the university and we already expect a reduction in pay, perhaps we lose our 13th month salary, anyhow, we already do not have research money. But it is not my salary which is the point, it is the quality of education which has already been so run down by the Berlusconi’s right wing gov-ernment. Government employers are already so badly paid I cannot imagine what will happen to the schools if they are cut further.’ (Interview June 2010)

The ‘PIIGGS’ (Portugal, Italy, Ireland (Iceland), Greece, Great Britain and Spain)2 – countries with high government debt lev-els and deficits relative to annual GDP – have been in the most precarious economic situation, least able to spend to support their economies, and most open to pressures to introduce main-stream neoliberal adjustment programs. The most extreme ex-ample is the recently-introduced EU-IMF brokered ‘recovery’ pro-gram introduced by the Greek state.

The Greek crisis is part of the ac-celeration of the whittling away of the European welfare state. It highlights the growing schism between the economies of north-western and southern Europe, resembling global north-south divides. Northern EU countries are using the Greek EU-IMF ‘bail out’ to pressure the rest of the southern PIIGGS — Italy, Spain and Portugal — to undertake further recessionary structural adjustment measures ‘on their own’, so they will not have to re-sort to a harsh ‘rescue’ package

the likes of the Greek one. Both Spain and Italy are trying hard to do so, with a great deal of social unrest.

Unjustly, the EU-IMF program constitutes a net transfer of wealth from Athens in large part to German and French banks, which had received hefty bail-outs from their governments. In effect, speculators are using bailout money against the gov-ernments that saved them, by speculating against their bonds. Even more unfairly for Greece, a three-year, 750 billion euro European Stabilization Mecha-nism was announced a few days after Greece signed the EU-IMF program, with bilateral loans and loan guarantees worth 440 billion euros. Eurozone policy-makers also demolished a taboo of EU regulation by allowing the ECB to intervene directly in the market buying EU government bonds to stabilise their price should speculators appear bent on dumping them by gambling on the countries’ default. These measures have come too late for Greece.

Footnotes

2 - According to Wikepedia, PIGS, PIIGS and PIIGGS are acronyms that originally referred to the Portugal, Italy, Greece Spain. The original term dates from the mid-90s when it was used to refer the southern economies of the European Union and became commonly used since the financial crisis 2007 onwards. These economies are seen to have high govern-ment debt and high government deficits relative to annual GDP despite being in the eurozone. Less frequently it has been used to refer to Ireland, Iceland, and Great Britain. The acronym is understood by many to be pejorative.

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The Impact of the Deepening Economic Crisis on Women and Gender Equality in Western Europe, Harcourt and Woestman. AWID

Reasons for the crisis

Greek economic and financial woes are a result of home grown dynamics embedded in and fos-tered by a neoliberal global eco-nomic and financial system large-ly outside of the country’s control. The revision of Greek economic and financial statistics at the end of 2009 exposed the country’s weaknesses: meager productive sector, large public sector budget deficit and debt caused not least by widespread political corruption and mismanagement and tax eva-sion, especially by the well-off. This opened up Greece – and by extension the Euro – for “attack” by financial speculators, who fu-elled and profited from uncer-tainty about the Greek financial situation, driving up the cost of debt until Greece appealed to the EU for help. These processes also opened up Greece for attack by other European governments, with IMF backing, that were push-ing neoliberal economic agendas, which Greece had been resisting.

The EU-IMF “rescue” package

The EU and IMF stepped in with a “rescue package” when the Greek “contagion” affected the euro. They agreed to loan Greece EUR 110 bil-lion over the next three years.

EU policy conditionalities for these funds were as draconian as the IMF’s. The Greek government agreed to a harsh structural adjust-ment program that embodies – but goes beyond – changes other Euro-pean countries have been undertak-ing over the past decade. As with structural adjustment programs in the Global South, this program aims to enable Greece to repay its foreign debt, and to “fix” its economy by

making it more competitive – mean-ing cutting especially wages and so-cial security entitlements.

Over the past six months, the gov-ernment has slashed spending through repeatedly harsher public sector wage and job freezes then cuts, raised retirement ages, and pension cuts. The private sector is following suit. The government has attempted to raise revenues by re-peatedly increasing taxes: not only on “sin” items such as cigarettes and alcohol, but also on basic ones such as food and petrol.

EU demands for repayment of EU-IMF rescue package monies were harsher than the IMF’s. Though some eurozone countries were willing to lend to Greece at lower interest rates, at the insistence of Chancellor Merkel of Germany, the EUR 80 billion to be lent by euro-zone countries will have to be paid back at market rates of around five percent. Arguing that this would make it difficult for Greece to ever pay back its debt, the IMF lent Greece 30 billion at a concession-ary rate of about half the EU’s.

These dynamics are part of a growing schism between north-Western and Southern Europe, resembling global north-south di-vides. The program constitutes a net transfer of wealth from Athens in large part to German and French banks, which have received hefty bailouts from their governments. Northern EU countries are using the “bail out” to pressure the rest of the “PIIGGS” — Italy, Spain and Portugal — to undertake further structural adjustment measures, so they will not have to resort to such a package. Moreover, shortly after Greece signed the agree-ment, the EU announced a EUR 440 billion European Stabilization Mechanism, and it allowed the

ECB to buy EU government bonds to stabilize their prices. These came too late for Greece.

Effects

The economic crisis and the structural adjustment program are heightening class inequalities and social unrest in Greece. They are aggravating, but also mitigating, some gender inequalities—and are causing a crisis in the Greek unpaid “care economy” along with the paid one.

Unemployment is increasing. While men’s employment was initially hit hardest, women’s un-employment has now surpassed men’s, and is growing with public sector freezes and cuts, espe-cially in the health and education sectors in which women predomi-nate. New jobs are usually part-time and/or insecure ones.

For those with jobs, wages are being cut – first in the public, now in the private sector. Middle class jobs are now subsistence ones; subsistence incomes now sub-subsistence. Already rock-bottom pensions have been cut.

The cost of living is on the rise due to the tax hikes. Pre-hikes, the cost of living in Athens was already higher than Amsterdam’s or Berlin’s. The gap between in-comes and cost of living is grow-ing. As a result, poverty — already higher than the rest of the EU at 20% pre-crisis — is rising. More women than men are poor and the elderly the most vulnerable. A large “new poor” group is emerg-ing. “They tell us to tighten our belts. But we can only tighten them so much”, commented a fe-male Greek civil servant. Social security is being cut at a time when it is needed more than ever.

Neoliberalism Home to Roost in the Eurozone: Greece

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The Impact of the Deepening Economic Crisis on Women and Gender Equality in Western Europe, Harcourt and Woestman. AWID

A care crisis — for individual women, families and the country — is loom-ing. Pension ages have been evened out, precluding women from early retirement which they had used to take care of their, or their children’s, children – not least because public daycares are few, and private ones expensive. Fewer families can pay immigrant women to help out. “Who will look after my children now?” ask many women, who are seen as solely responsible for child care.

Tensions are rising – not only on the streets, but inside homes. Men losing their ability to play their role as breadwinner are beginning to take their frustrations out on their partners. Children are starting to feel the brunt of parents’ worries. Foreigners, especially male ones, are increasingly maligned as “tak-ing Greek men’s jobs”.

Resistance / “Alternatives”

Greeks are resisting, and proposing “alternatives”. We have strong la-bour unions, though they are under attack, that have proposed “alterna-tives”, which have run the gamut from: Make those responsible pay, have wealthy Greeks cover the debt, sell off state assets, take the state to court for contravention of EU social policy/laws, balance austerity with growth, bring in a new global eco-nomic governance structure, stem the tide of the neoliberal EU project.

In Greece, such proposals have carried little weight, because trade unions and other leftist groups have not been able to turn to a social-ist party for support. These draco-nian measures have been pushed through by a “socialist” government.

Feminist organizing

One of the downsides of a strong la-bour union system, at least in Greece, is that women’s issues and voices have been sidelined, considered “sec-ondary”. The independent feminist movement is small, not only because

organizing has traditionally taken par-ty form, but also because conserva-tive notions about gender roles held by women as well as men make femi-nist organizing challenging.

One potential “positive” effect of emerging dire circumstances, and ineffectiveness of traditional unions/parties to stem the auster-ity tide, is the potential crystalliza-tion of women’s organizing in ex-tra-party form. Some of the issues around which organization is likely to crystallize over the next months could/should include: More public daycares – of de-cent quality – are required to pre-vent a care crisis. Care work needs to be included in years counted toward pensions.Military spending should be cut – and used to create jobs in the paid “care” economy, especially depen-dent and health care, and education. Gender mainstreaming – gender specific statistics, impact assess-ments, and budgeting — needs to be incorporated into government pro-cesses to better map, and change, the gendered dynamics of ongoing and planned policy changes The state General Secretariat for Equality Research and Center for Gender Equality Research (KETHI) need to be re-jumpstarted and funded.

Where to go from here?The feeling in Greece these days is that the rails are pretty much set – at least for the next three years of the EU-IMF pack-age duration. During that period, changes can/will be only “band-aids” – minor alterations — but worth fighting for. If nothing else, these three years provide time for alternative proposals and orga-nizations to emerge. One of the advantages of being in the centre of international attention over the past months has been openings in international fora providing Greek activists with international ex-posure and support – which will continue to be greeted with true Greek warmth and hospitality.

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The Impact of the Deepening Economic Crisis on Women and Gender Equality in Western Europe, Harcourt and Woestman. AWID

The earlier 2009 Harcourt re-view of how the economic crisis is hitting women and changing gender relations in Western Eu-rope took up several key issues. We take another look at these issues below, reflecting on the trends in 2010 drawing heavily on interviews undertaken with women from Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Italy, Spain, The Neth-erlands and UK.

Employment precarity

High on the European social agenda has been the commit-ment to maintain and improve social protection and social in-clusion – including gender equal-ity and class solidarity. However, this has been contradicted by increasing recourse to neoliberal economics of governments and their better-off constituents. The growing “flexibility” in the labour market during the restructur-ing of the European economies along neoliberal lines in the 1980s and 1990s – exacerbated with the newest recovery pack-ages — has made finding decent paid work a continuous struggle for men and women. (ILO 2009) Even as women have been en-tering the paid work force in in-creasing numbers, the increase in women’s employment has largely been in part-time work or on short contracts for low wag-es. (Fagen and Hebson 2006; Matthoni and Doerr 2007; Harvey 2009)

As reported in the 2009 paper by Dutting, the initial figures com-ing out from the ILO suggested that women were not the first to lose paid work in the crisis. The first job losses were in the bank-ing sector, the car industry and construction sector. These tra-ditionally male sectors were hit hard by lay-offs, or by changes in

working conditions from perma-nent to temporary employment contracts with less benefits as well as pay cuts.

However in 2010 it is increas-ingly women’s work in the public sector that is being cut. Educa-tion and nursing sector jobs numbers are being cut — tradi-tional work for women in coun-tries such as the UK, Sweden, Spain Italy and Greece. For those with jobs, there have been big pay cuts along with an increase in working hours and a loss of benefits. As the interviews un-derlined people are willing to take these pay cuts because they just want to stay in a job. As one woman from Austria described it:

“There is a lot of pressure for women both at work and at home, many are being fired and then being rehired on short term contracts, with no pensions or benefits, longer hours and less pay. People are accepting it be-cause anything is better than no job at all.” (Interview Bucharest June 6, 2010)

The increased precarity of work and reduction of social protec-tion particularly for poorer seg-ments of the population has ma-jor gender implications through-out Europe. Already trade unions and social movements – and European citizens themselves — are talking about the people newly at risk of poverty, the new poor. Poor women figure pre-dominantly in this group particu-larly those in southern Europe, where gender gaps are greatest and social protection less exten-sive than in northern countries. These are the countries that, like Greece, are set to take on the most stringent “recovery” prac-tices – so that women, especial-ly migrants and single parents,

are most at risk and hardest hit. (Women’s Working Group on Fi-nance for Development 2009)

In Spain, cuts have now been made to benefits enjoyed by women workers; to quote one Spanish woman activist “The crisis has also resulted in poli-cies that have reduced the num-ber of days given for maternity leave, disproportionately affect-ing women, and particularly poor women.” (Personal Email July 2010)

Female under/unemployment has been causing less concern than male unemployment in the press and among policy makers, who are still working under the as-sumption of the male family wage earner. Concern has been raised about the increase in youth un-employment. In places like Italy and Spain where tertiary educa-tion is more or less free, there has been an increase in enroll-ments in both higher education and internship programs (unpaid on the job training, or job experi-ence) with even less guarantee of employment at the end of the training period.

Cuts in public sector spending: paid and unpaid workWhereas the financial market and “real economy” are defined as productive and value-adding processes, neoliberal econo-mists assume that childcare and natural cycles of the environ-ment are outside of economics and do not create value. The in-terests of capital promote mar-ket principles of competition, efficiency and profit over provi-sion and care. Yet, they depend on care work for workers to be productive.

Impacts on Women and Gender Roles in Western Europe

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The Impact of the Deepening Economic Crisis on Women and Gender Equality in Western Europe, Harcourt and Woestman. AWID

As Wichterich points out “indus-trial and financial value creation is based on a thick layer of social regeneration, care work and social safety nets on the one hand and the regenerative power of nature on the other. The capitalist valori-zation process constantly appro-priates those social and natural performances, without remunera-tion or by mercilessly underpaying for personal services such as care for the elderly – work allegedly considered of little productivity.”

As literature on structural adjust-ment and then post-socialist tran-sition has been noting for decades, when cuts in government spending for basic social services – such as health care, and education — are made as part of restructuring pro-grams, much of the care of chil-dren, the elderly, the ill, and other community work is taken up by women as unpaid labour.

The roll-back of the European welfare states and the neo-liberal reforms in all European countries have meant diminished social pro-visions of all kinds, including public transport which has become more expensive, increased user fees in national health care systems, a de-crease in general social benefits, and cuts in child care programs. (Pestiei 2006)

Interviews with women from around Europe reported in Austria, cuts in kindergartens; in Italy, ma-jor cuts in hospitals and education budgets; in Spain, cuts in transport subsidies; and in the UK, closure of shelters. (Bucharest June 6, 2010)

Care work and the impact of the crisis on migrant women

We are facing what some call a “care crisis”. As more and more unpaid work is being put on wom-en’s shoulders, women are reach-ing a fracture point. Too little atten-tion is being paid to redistribution of the unpaid work evenly among

they earn low wages, work long and antisocial hours, are often un-documented and in the informal sector. As women lose their jobs the need for migrant workers in the home will be reduced leading to increased poverty and insecu-rity for those groups.

Women in the Netherlands and UK report that migrant women, par-ticularly undocumented migrant women are now losing domestic care jobs exposing them to even more invisible, undocumented and dangerous work. For example, in the UK many Latin Americans who were working in cleaning jobs in offices are now finding contracts are being changed so they work more hours for less pay. Or worse, they are losing those unskilled jobs and working in the informal sector in private homes for lower pay and no guaranteed conditions. But again, a badly paid job is bet-ter than no job for these women. One concern raised was that there are more reports of violence and abuse among migrant women since 2008, with shrinking re-sources and less facilities to help them. (Bucharest Interview June 6, 2010)

Insecurities and fears

Natisha Kaul (2009) speaks of the violence caused by spurious eco-nomics when people “lose their jobs and livelihoods, when they witness massively divergent re-wards for work, when they see an endless perpetuation of inequality around them. Such involuntary un-employment in the long run leads to social breakdown and commu-nity fragmentation.” (Kaul 2009)

Intra-household tensions, which can turn violent, rise as both women and men reach breaking points. Xenophobia is also on the rise, as Western European citizens feel – rightly or not – that foreign-ers are taking ‘their jobs’. Potential increase in the ‘black economy’ activities, including expanding ex-ploitation of local and immigrant

men and women or on how to re-distribute the unpaid work back to the state, where Europeans have long argued that it belongs. (Razavi 2009)

In southern Europe, middle-aged women in paid employment have often relied on their mothers to take care of their children. Care work has been passed up the gen-erational ladder. Recent changes in retirement policies in Greece, e.g., will make this more difficult, as early retirement ages for women are being cancelled. As they re-main for up to 15 more years in paid employment, older women’s options for providing this type of assistance disappear. Who will do this care work?

Migrant women have taken up care work as accession has opened up possibilities for travel and work. Migrant women’s work has largely been informal, flexible, low paid, often illegal, and an extension of traditional ‘housework’ like clean-ing and caring work, or sex work in the pleasure industry.

As their incomes are cut or they lose their paid work, formerly middle class – now new poor – Western European women are firing their nannies and carrying out the work themselves. Migrant women’s reduced income has had a domino effect in their countries, where remittances from family members abroad often constitute significant portions of national GDP. (Green et al 2010)

It is important to recognize that mi-grants in Europe are part and par-cel of a new gender order where essentially domestic workers are helping to reconcile the balance between productive and reproduc-tive work in family life in Europe. Beyond discussions about why men do not take up this care work easily, what is also important to note is that migrant women are in-visible from European discussions around rights, benefits, health care and economic security. As a result

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The Impact of the Deepening Economic Crisis on Women and Gender Equality in Western Europe, Harcourt and Woestman. AWID

women as sex workers is also of concern.

In Spain reports are that “The lev-els of xenophobia against migrants — specifically from Eastern Eu-rope and South America — have increased, as jobs have become more difficult to find.” (Personal Email July 2010)

Several women reported how gov-ernment elections were run openly on racist lines: in The Netherlands, Spain and the UK. Austrian head-lines were about migrants taking ‘our jobs’. The Dutch public openly debated the place of migrants in ‘our Dutch society’. The UK also campaigned around the ‘migration’ question.

Overall, there is a noted rise in xe-nophobia, as the competition for jobs increases. The gender dimen-sion to these fears is pronounced with public anger and fear of for-eign young men, and women por-trayed as victims of backward cul-tures.

Xenophobia is not only evident within countries between native born Europeans and migrants, but also between European countries, with important implications for the eurozone. The ‘PIIGGS’ mostly located in southern Europe, are being met with xenophobic reac-tions by central and northern Eu-ropean countries – with recent German-Greek politics the most extreme example. Over the past months, German press has been awash with images of ‘the lazy Greeks’ who should pay for their lax lifestyle. German politicians have gone as far as to suggest that ‘sick’ economies be excluded from the eurozone.

As one woman from Germany stat-ed, these relations are complex:“We are in solidarity with Greece … The German Greeks have or-ganized a campaign for Germans to holiday in Greece this summer. But you also have to be aware that many of us have already undertak-

en many similar measures to those that Greece is undertaking now, with significant social protest at home – for example, in connection with pension changes. Maybe the pension cuts in Greece are more draconian, as they started out from an already lower basis. [but] there may be limits to solidarity from other European citizens who think that it is fair that Greece, which has an “old fashioned” welfare state, now has to undertake such chang-es too.” (Interview June 2010)

Solidarity protests

Along with xenophobic responses have been protests on the streets. Perhaps the most widely reported internationally have been the huge protests in Greece but there have been demonstrations and strikes elsewhere around Europe. In Ita-ly, for example, there has been a spate of demonstrations by vari-ous groups including high school teachers and students as well as car industry and transport trade unions. There are ongoing and heated blog debates that keep up a running discussion about the anti-crisis measures which have re-duced working hours and failed to support loss of jobs and security. Again women and gender remain elusive in the ‘male stream’. In Austria, a young women reported being the only one on the podium among the speakers at recent large scale demonstration. (Interviews Bucharest June 6, 2010)

It is notable that there is now a mix of people engaged as well as the more predictable unionized forms of struggles: demonstrations of formal and informal workers in France, strikes by Italian and Ger-man teachers and violent as well as broad-based peaceful protests in Greece.

From the interviews however, it seems that many people are not protesting or seeing the point in doing so. As one woman stated boldly, people are too busy try-ing to make ends meet. There is

not only tension but also fear and confusion as the target of blame keeps moving.

There still seems to be a strong need for more open discussion about what is happening and clear-er ideas about how to respond positively. For example how to use knowledge gained from gender re-sponsive budgeting experiments in localities around Europe?

EU and the accountability vacuum

One of the major emerging con-cerns of citizens in this last year has been the growing sense of an accountability vacuum. National governments pass the blame to the EU level organizations/pro-cesses and EU actors often blame the international environment. All blame “the markets” – as if they were somehow persons, and not mechanisms that we have created – and can change. No one takes responsibility.

The European Union is one of the major economic and political play-ers in Europe and globally, and along with the US a driving force in promoting corporate interests and the neo-liberal agenda. In re-sponse to the crisis the EU has proven largely unwilling to impose fundamental reforms of the finan-cial system or regulatory systems for the finance industry in Europe.

The fact that some countries within Europe are being asked to structurally adjust by stron-ger EU countries – hand in hand with the IMF – while stronger countries are still holding onto protectionist measures is start-ing to emerge as deeply wor-rying. Far from questioning the neoliberal agenda, it seems that the response is to push for fur-ther liberalization and deregu-lation of financial markets and aggressively pursue policies to open up emerging markets for EU companies, by promoting new,

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ambitious Free Trade Agreements as the way out of the current crisis (Wichterich 2009).

It is no wonder that many women reported that the EU project is seen as far away from the national real-ity. Not one woman interviewed reported that the EU was seen as supporting people to weather the crisis. On the contrary it was seen as undermining national and local policies. (Bucharest Interviews June 6, 2010)

‘Alternative’ development vision: collective well-beingWhat has emerged from the in-terviews and our review of re-cent understanding by women of the crisis and its impact on Europe is that the economic and financial crisis is impacting on everyone’s daily lives and creat-ing a sense of insecurity around their future, but that it is a Eu-ropean one, however divided Europe seems. One woman from Bulgaria spoke very revealingly about how Bulgaria is looking to Europe to see what happens, particularly as the biggest bank in Bulgaria is Unicredit of Italy. With a finance minister com-ing fresh from the World Bank, they are experiencing the impact of the neoliberal policy man-tra of cuts, with the result that households, small businesses and services are all suffering. (Interview Bucharest June 6, 2010) What happens in different corners of Europe is impacting on other women’s lives and vice versa. As citizens of a powerful economic player, Europeans are also accountable for collective

wellbeing in other places. Trans-national feminism has worked for women’s right to social, eco-nomic and cultural wellbeing globally wherever women are placed. It is important that wom-en in Western Europe remember that and the vision of a global cosmopolitanism and rights and livelihoods for all, including be-tween the different pockets of Europe. (Harcourt 2009)

Taking responsible positions as Europeans means having the courage to change our lifestyles and expectations. In this, femi-nist solidarity is very important. In order to survive the crisis European women are beginning to dialogue about the different ways the crisis is hitting dif-ferent women and to strategize across towns, provinces, coun-tries and sub regions in Europe to mitigate the worst effects, learn from each other and sup-port those that are suffering the most. In Europe working across the borders of the EU is critical to maintain and improve all Euro-pean women’s social, economic and political positions. There are different strategies, from shar-ing analysis to supporting more women in European spaces such as the European Parliament. The crisis will no doubt bring about more informal network-ing and alliance building among women’s movements concerned with social and economic jus-tice. It could mean moving more consistently into formal political decision making spaces in or-der to change them. It certainly means challenging and changing the rules and being in a position to do so, shifting the ethics in which economics is embedded.

The statement by Christa Wicht-erich that a crucial building block of a solidarity-based and justice-oriented economic regime would be a “redistribution and revalua-tion of waged labour and care la-bour, of production and reproduc-tion,” still holds true. She sees this as, “the cornerstone for an economy which gives preference to provision for all and coopera-tion over growth, competition and maximizing profit and puts the economy as well as democracy back on its feet: it would plan, regulate and decide about the division of labour, markets, well-being and [social]development from the bottom up, in a decen-tralized and gender-just manner.” (Wichterich 2009)

The campaign around the Ac-tive Inclusion strategy for policy coherence between the Active Inclusion strategy, the European Employment guidelines and the Flexicurity principles continues in their work ‘Towards a European society that cares for all’. This includes the right to be cared for and to care for others, the roles of service provider and recipient, the issue of care in the context of EU policies, additional care needs in an ageing society, the specific is-sues for particular target groups (e.g. disabilities, mental health, community care, women as prime care givers, domestic migrant workers) and funding mecha-nisms. www.socialplatform.org

It is telling that the largest net-works working on women’s rights in Europe: Women in Development Europe and European Women’s Lobby have both taken up migra-tion as their key themes for 2010 meetings.

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The Impact of the Deepening Economic Crisis on Women and Gender Equality in Western Europe, Harcourt and Woestman. AWID

The search is now on among ac-tivists and economists to lobby governments to renegotiate eco-nomic rules, regulations and so-cial contracts for new ways of organizing production and trade, consumption, care and social se-curity. The hope is that popular coalitions among different citi-zen and civil society groups will be forged, building a new agenda that takes us beyond the crisis.

It also means being aware that this is a painful and difficult time and we need to support each other as we experience change. Such support for marginalized poor women in Europe, many of them migrants, could mean the difference between tipping over the edge. It is important to expose false fears about migrants, mak-ing visible the underlying causes and links between economic policies and migration, and look-ing for mutual interests in order dissolve the current climate of fear and dissatisfaction. We need to ensure that there is a revalu-ing of care work and ethics that move away from individual con-sumption and economic greed as social and economic drivers and towards collective well-being and responsibility for others. It is therefore important to use the entry points we have into eco-nomic and political institutions in order to use the tools devel-oped such as gender budgeting and ensuring gender responsive women and men are in positions to build political change that can

overcome systemic economic and social inequalities.

Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz (Conway 2010) and others have argued that ‘Deficit fetish-ism is a mistake.’ Austerity should be counter-balanced with growth-generation measures, Stiglitz suggests that a bond be launched by European states with countries most in need having better credit rates. European socialists had pro-posed something along these lines, though it was not implemented. Stiglitz also argued that the Eu-ropean Central Bank should loan states at the same interest rate it gives to banks.

In Western Europe citizens, partic-ularly those in the PIIGS, feel deeply betrayed by their government, par-ticularly when austerity measures have been introduced by socialist governments, and they don’t know where to turn. The grim circum-stances and ineffectiveness of po-litical parties and traditional unions offer a space for feminist voices to be strengthened, and to be heard.

It is even more important for femi-nists to work together to produce critiques that could help create a much more gendered response to the crisis. (WIDE 2009) Such critique would need to recognize and address the growing unem-ployment of women due to public sector cuts in education and health along with women’s increased un-paid care work; improve the pro-vision of public daycares; account

for women’s unpaid work, perhaps to the point of counting the years taken out to mother children in contributing towards women’s pension years. More radically, there is also the call to cut military spending rather than social, edu-cation and health spending and the awareness that this is the moment to rethink the consumption and capitalist system itself.

European feminists need to re-spond not only to economic but also ecological and social sys-temic crises. We need to challenge corporate capitalism, along with its inequalities and power struc-tures. It is critical that we draw out the interconnections between, for example, the degradation of ecosystems by unrestrained pro-duction and the voraciousness of global capitalism, along with the increasing vulnerability of par-ticular communities, in Europe as well as outside Europe. How do we put ‘well-being’ and ‘sustain-ability’ of people and the Earth at the centre of economic policy along with gender equality? Femi-nists need to join with others to restructure economic, social and ecological relations. It is hard to find the places where these dia-logues are happening consistent-ly. European citizens have yet to swing behind the banner of less consumption, but perhaps as the climate justice movement under-lines this more and more, it will be the harsh reality that will forces a change in the current social and economic order.

Conclusions

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The Impact of the Deepening Economic Crisis on Women and Gender Equality in Western Europe, Harcourt and Woestman. AWID

Conway, E. (2010) “Greek crisis intensifies as Joe Stiglitz calls for Europe to ‘teach the speculators a lesson” Daily Telegraph Feb 2010

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References

New from AWID is this 2010 edition of the brief se-ries: Impacts of the Crisis on Women´s Rights: Sub regional perspectives. We are excited to present an update, by region, to the exceptional research con-ducted in 2009 on the impact of the global financial crisis on women’s rights. This update provides rel-evant new data, testimonies, and voices from women activists on the ground. Each case presents an op-portunity to unpack the in-depth challenges faced by different women in diverse contexts while examining possible policy solutions from a feminist perspec-tive. This work takes us on a journey to help us think beyond the financial crisis and its implications, and start reflecting about the new world being created. At AWID we believe these studies contribute to build-ing and supporting women’s movements.

Brief 1: The impact of the crisis on womenin Latin AmericaBy Alma Espino and Norma Sanchís

Brief 2: Impact of the global crisis on women in developing Asia — an updateBy Jayati Ghosh

Brief 3: Women of the Pacific and the global economic crisisBy Karanina Sumeo

Brief 4: Impacts of the global economic and financial crisis on women in Central AsiaBy Nurgul Djanaeva

Brief 5: The Impact of the Deepening Economic Crisis on Women and Gender Equality in Western Europe By Wendy Harcourt and Lois Woestman

Brief 6: The Impact of the Crisis on Women in Eastern Europe By Eva Charkiewicz

Brief 7: The Global Economic Crisis and Gender Relations: The Greek CaseBy Lois Woestman

Brief 8: United States: The Continued Need for Social Sector StimulusBy Rania Antonopoulos and Taun Toay

Brief 9: The Impact of the Deepening Economic Crisis on Women in Eastern and Southern AfricaBy Zo Randriamaro

These publications can be found on the AWID website: www.awid.org.

Impacts of the Crisis on Women’s Rights: Sub regional perspectives

This publication is part of AWID’s initiative: Influencing Development Actors and Practices for Women’s Rights (IDeA) that seeks to contribute to advancing feminist understandings of the relationship between development and women’s rights issues with a particular focus on the aid effectiveness agenda and the Financing for Development process at the UN.